A Civilisational Limit to EU Enlargement? European Studies Debates

Debates about EEC/EU enlargement generally centre on practical issues such as trade, migration and political stability. However civilisational narratives about the long-term historical or fundamental cultural ‘Europeanness’ of candidates are also regularly mobilised. Spanish and central and eastern European intellectuals and politicians marketed their countries with some success as returning to their true civilisational home, arguing that without them, Europe was incomplete. These arguments however also implicitly identify third countries which are not culturally European and therefore should be excluded from European integration. ‘Return to Europe’ narratives for example often established Orthodox Russia as an alien civilisation, which had kidnapped Central Europe from its true European home. However, certain French narratives, defining European civilisation in terms of liberal modern values rather than religious tradition, implicitly questioned the Europeanness of central Europe.

My paper will examine the treatment of civilizational narratives in French, Spanish and Polish European Studies literature during the accession negotiation periods of Spain and Poland, focussing on the most canonical work in each country. I will particularly investigate the balance in this literature between advocacy for national positions, including the mobilisation of civilizational arguments, and a self-consciously objective scientific neutrality, which examines how civilizational narratives are instrumentalised politically. I will draw connections between this balance and the process of transnationalisation of the academic community that studies European integration, as evidenced by factors such as its citation practices, increasing use of English as a common language and the migration of scholars for work and study.